A00300 - Book of the Month for the Month of July 2024: Black Rednecks and White Liberals: A Critique of Thomas Sowell

 

In search for answers to the question "After 50 Years Why Haven't We Made More Progress?", I returned to Thomas Sowell's Black Rednecks and White Liberals.  This time I finished the entire book.  And while I admire Dr. Sowell's writing ability, I am less than enthused about his scholarly acumen.  While reading the book, I often wondered if his work was peer reviewed while remembering this paragraph from his Wikipedia profile:

Sowell has taught economics at Howard University, Rutgers, Cornell, Brandeis University, Amherst College, and the University of California, Los Angeles.^[28] At Howard, Sowell wrote, he was offered the position as head of the economics department, but he declined.^[35] Since 1980, he has been a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where he holds a fellowship named after Rose and Milton Friedman, his mentor.^[30][36] The Hoover appointment, because it did not involve teaching, gave him more time for his numerous writings.^[12] In addition, Sowell appeared several times on William F. Buckley Jr.'s show Firing Line, during which he discussed the economics of race and privatization. Sowell has written that he gradually lost faith in the academic system, citing low academic standards and counterproductive university bureaucracy, and he resolved to leave teaching after his time at the University of California, Los Angeles.^[35] In A Personal Odyssey, he recounts, "I had come to Amherst, basically, to find reasons to continue teaching. What I found instead were more reasons to abandon an academic career."^[35]

After reading Black Rednecks and White Liberals, I think I can see why Dr. Sowell would find Amherst College to be incompatible and why he soon after abandoned his "academic career". 

I previously referenced an article by James B. Stewart entitled "Thomas Sowell's Quixotic Quest to Denigrate African American Culture: A Critique" 

Thomas Sowell's Quixotic Quest to Denigrate African American Culture: A Critique on JSTOR

Thomas Sowell's Quixotic Quest to Denigrate African American Culture: A ... James B. Stewart, Thomas Sowell's Quixotic Quest to Denigrate African American Culture: A Critique, The Journal ...

I again suggest that those who can access the article read it and reflect on why Thomas Sowell could have such a long and lucrative career "denigrating African American culture".  And, after reading Professor Stewart's critique, I also recommend reading the two critiques set forth below: 

A Critique of Thomas Sowell. There is something of an obsession… | by Tristan Graham | Medium

An Exhaustive Review of Thomas Sowell’s New Book (substack.com)

and to note the conclusion reached by the critic of a newer book by Thomas Sowell,  -- a critique which resonates so soundly with me.

Peace,

Everett "Skip" Jenkins

Fairfield, California

July 23, 2024

88888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888

 

While the world has changed a lot since 1968, we still enjoy the inheritance of past generations. Those slums MLK mentioned are still standing. Unemployment, ignorance, and poverty are all still perpetuated, primarily against the same groups of people they have been for centuries. That’s not always because people actively choose to discriminate. Structural inequality, implicit biases, and the mere stickiness of the past can keep past disparities in place for entirely arbitrary reasons. Sowell shrugs his shoulders, contending that arbitrariness is merely part of life, even if it’s anathema to any common sense understanding of the phrase “equal opportunity.”

Sowell’s contention in this book is that it’s fallacious to disagree with his free-market fundamentalism. If you merely mention the role of discrimination or slavery in shaping market outcomes, Sowell stands ready to accuse you of reductionism. If you think the rich should be taxed, Sowell will explain to you that people are not chess pieces, though he won’t touch the economic literature on such a topic. If you promote raising the minimum wage, you’re a social justice do-gooder with no appreciation for the knowledge of affected parties. Who cares if those affected parties agree with you? Thomas Sowell has a repertoire of Wall Street Journal op-eds, neo-Confederates, and Hayek quotes ready to tell you that you’re a hubristic and dogmatic intellectual following in the intellectual tradition of a bunch of eugenicists.

That would be a problem if this book were trying to convince anybody. After reading it, I am confident that it’s not. Sowell does not even bother to cite the contemporary “social justice advocates” that he is taking on, instead choosing to rip sentence fragments out of the works of the dead. The only living adversary he addresses by name is Ralph Nader, and that’s only by mentioning in passing a quote from an article Nader published in 1959. The reader, who presumably already sees it Sowell’s way, is expected to fill in these gaps or merely assume that Sowell’s adversaries think in the ways he says they do. Nor is this work a piece of scholarship. Sowell provides several pages of endnotes, which at times span an impressive scope of economic history. But he frequently misrepresents his sources and for each time he cites Braudel, he then turns around and mischaracterizes an op-ed. Thomas Sowell is convinced that the dogmatic eggheads, armed with their insular studies, are foisting their policies on us in an ill-conceived attempt to make the world a better place. To compensate, Sowell dogmatically persists in his belief that public policy should never do anything to improve the world, and that we should all quiet down and leave the rich to run the affairs of society.